After the Wedding

The trip to Benin took us 6 hours! A 3 hour trip turned into 6. The roads are so bad because the rain practically washed the shabbily done work on the roads. Those things don't last more than a few months and we don't have the culture of maintenance in Nigeria. Anyways here is the story

The arrival

La familia who don't live here started arriving a week before. 7 aunts 4 cousins and my lil sis all prepared to leave for Benin Wednesday morning. They filled up two buses, 2 aunts in one with the luggage and the others in the second, and left at 9 am.


The accident

At 10 am we received a call from with my cousin screaming incomprehensively...an accident...down a ditch.....sob sob....and all I could from my mum (she picked up the call) was, 'its a lie!, armed robbers?, accident? Is everyone okay?', they went down a ditch????' The tears had already started flowing rapidly.

Apparently the two buses were driving in a convoy when a few cars in front of them had a terrible accident. The first bus skidded to a halt to avoid the accident while the second swerved off. A Peugeot behind the second bus was not aware of what had just happened and was still speeding so the couple slammed hard into the first bus (with the 2 aunts) and pushed it over the side.

The bus went down the side but was supported by tree branches as my aunts looked down to the river below. They eventually climbed back up the hill unscathed. It was another story for the couple in the 504 who flew out the car and sustained terrible injuries. Apparently the lady’s two legs were shattered and dangling. She and the guy were rushed to the hospital. I pray that they survived.

I thank God that everyone in my family was okay. We were so glad we had prayed before their departure.

The journey

Driving on the highway is very frustrating. There are police checkpoints every mile and they make very dumb requests. One asked for the receipt for the registration of the licence plate. Another group asked for C-caution and fire extinguishers. The most hilarious one was this dude who looked at the car documents and said…’Its expired!’ ‘Your insurance expired in March’. Of course we were quite shocked because knowing the way police like to extort citizens of this dear country, we make sure we don’t give them room to and seeing that it was a company car, we expected all the documents to be okay but apparently not. He opened up another page where a representative attested to the ownership of the car on behalf of the company and asked to see the representative. My mum and I were perplexed. ‘He’s not here’, my mum said. ‘I don’t even know who he is, he’s just a representative not the real owner’. ‘When he signed this, did you read it?’ the police guy asked?. My mum was really tired at this point, she came down to his level,‘You know what, I’m really tired, just tell me what you want and let us go, this journey has taken longer than it should have already and we still have a few hours to go. ‘Ehen mummy, that’s what you should have said since nowwwww. Just drop something for your boys’. We later found out that the insurance expires March 2007 which is why he held onto the document and wouldn’t let us read it.

The wedding

The wedding was fun. I was a hostess and the dress was quite lovely. My cousin and her husband couldn't stop staring at each other and holding hands. They looked so cute together.

Note to self: There will be no kids in my bridal train.

Some of the kids were so moody! Unbelievable. I will download the pics and will post some up on my Photoblog.

Like I said it was a family reunion, I don't think I slept a day without a headache and totally fagged out! So much commotion and noise but it was great! I took a friend along with me and I'm sure she thinks we Benin peeps are loud! I hope you had fun Steph.

All in all, I had a great time and ohhhhh...I caught the Bouquet!